Flashlights are now ubiquitous for a wide variety of uses, and over one hundred million machined aluminum flashlights have been sold by Mag Instrument alone under the registered trademarks MagLite® and Mini Maglite®. The construction of such flashlights is well known and illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,577,263 and 5,260,858, the disclosures of which are specifically incorporated herein by reference.
Machined aluminum flashlights typically have an aluminum barrel, as is the case with the MagLite® and Mini Maglite® flashlights, a tail cap at a rear end of the barrel, which can be removed to replace one or more batteries held in a series configuration within the barrel, and a head at the opposite end of the barrel containing a lighting assembly for emitting light. It is well known that the tail cap can contain a lip seal and threads so that it can be removably threaded into the flashlight barrel and also be configured to receive the conductive spring so that the conductive spring will complete an electrical circuit to produce light when the flashlight is switched on.